Old Republic to segregate same-gender relationships to a single planet

Coming expansion will add new romance options, but only on planet Makeb.

Given the notable freedom of sexual orientation that players can enjoy in previous BioWare games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, it was always a bit odd that the company's Star Wars-themed MMO, The Old Republic, strictly limited characters to relationships with opposite-gendered characters. The developer is planning to fix that situation with March's Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion, but same-sex character relationship partners will be limited to certain computer-controlled characters on a single in-game planet.

Same-gender relationships (SGRs) have been a commonly requested feature in TOR since its launch late in 2011, and executive producer Jeff Hickman apologized in a recent blog post that it is "taking so long to get in the game." But despite earlier promises that such relationships would be possible with the "companion characters" that serve as semi-permanent sidekicks for players, Hickman noted the feature will initially be available only "with some NPCs on Makeb."

Bioware and EA refused a request for further comment on the matter, but Hickman's post suggests that technical difficulties and the amount of work needed to retrofit existing characters for SGRs are to blame for the feature not being more widespread initially. Back in June, former TOR community manager Stephen Reid said that same-gender relationships were pushed from a launch feature to a post-launch addition because of "the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO of this scale and size."

Back then, Reid promised "the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options," but Hickman's recent announcement suggested adding SGR options to those fully voiced and animated companions would "take a lot more work than we realized at the time." That work has been put off, Hickman suggested, so the team could focus on making tweaks necessary to make the game free to play.

Hickman's post makes it clear that "allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of," and that the development team does "intend on pursuing more SGR options in the future." Still, segregating gay characters to a specific planet doesn't look good, whatever the technical reason behind it. Relegating SGRs to one small corner of the massive Old Republic universe comes off as a kind of "separate but equal" half-measure treatment of the issue that might actually be worse than having no SGRs at all. As Bioware co-founder Ray Muyzka said in an interview last February, same-sex relationships should be "part of the expectation of a role-playing game, [and] part of the expectation of a BioWare game."

The player base, predictably, is heavily split on whether the recent decision goes too far or doesn't go far enough. A community forum thread for players stating "I do not agree with the inclusion of SGRs" has garnered 48 pages of responses in just a few days. Other threads lay out detailed suggestions for even more romance options. A year-old thread discussing the possibility of SGRs in the game now has over 5,000 posts encompassing practically every possible view on the issue. The one thing both sides seem to be able to agree on is that they aren't exactly satisfied with how Bioware is handling the introduction at this point.

Promoted Comments

Kinda saw this coming. It can't be easy programing all of the contingencies for a game where absolutely everything has to be voice acted.

The logistics of one-line voice acting in most games is fairly complex as it is. But here you also have to remember that they're programming in dialogue for every class, and every companion, and every quest and npc in the game. And with every conversation with every one of those characters where every dialogue wheel has three different choices, and three different responses, and in many cases multiple different ways the dialogue and quests progress from there.

And then in the cases of returning characters, you have to (ideally) dredge up every one of the voice actors that previously voiced those characters. God help you if the voice actor doesn't want to do it(or isn't even alive anymore...).

Programming TOR to begin with was pretty revolutionary, but my god it has to be nightmarish to add content to.

I can't be the only one that actively tries to achieve every possible relationship option in one playthrough in a BioWare game and giggle maniacally at the results as my character opens his/her legs for every single breathing entity in the game universe.

It's practically a BioWare tradition by now.

193 posts | registered Dec 2, 2011

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

Wait. If I'm a male player playing a female character, and I have a female companion is that a same-gender relationship? What if I find a genderless companion? What if my female character has a male companion?I'm so confused.

Unfortunately article headlines like these are kind of clickbait (yay success i guess?). It's like saying ford segregates boats to just the ocean, rivers, and lakes when it turns out they just decided to start making boats. Well..uh....duh..., trying to go back and turn all cars already out there into amphibious vehicles would be an absurd amount of work.

I could easily see this as a technical issue, depending on how much scripting goes into the relationship side of things. If there are a large number of gender dependant activities or responses, it's not like you can just flip a switch and make all of the current NPC population bi.

It's a fully voiced MMO that just cut some staff and went FTP. I can understand why some people are upset about the one planet but given the current constraints of the game this move by Bioware is understandable.

I was kind of hoping they were going to make some sort of thought-provoking and timely statement by making same sex relationships legal on only one planet. Alas! The reasons are far more mundane than that.

Kinda saw this coming. It can't be easy programing all of the contingencies for a game where absolutely everything has to be voice acted.

The logistics of one-line voice acting in most games is fairly complex as it is. But here you also have to remember that they're programming in dialogue for every class, and every companion, and every quest and npc in the game. And with every conversation with every one of those characters where every dialogue wheel has three different choices, and three different responses, and in many cases multiple different ways the dialogue and quests progress from there.

And then in the cases of returning characters, you have to (ideally) dredge up every one of the voice actors that previously voiced those characters. God help you if the voice actor doesn't want to do it(or isn't even alive anymore...).

Programming TOR to begin with was pretty revolutionary, but my god it has to be nightmarish to add content to.

I can't be the only one that actively tries to achieve every possible relationship option in one playthrough in a BioWare game and giggle maniacally at the results as my character opens his/her legs for every single breathing entity in the game universe.

The headlines talking about this issue are really, really silly (including Ars's coverage). First of all, this isn't news. Hickman published this post a couple weeks ago and saw a largely tacit acceptance on the forums. It's only hitting the press now because someone found the article and turned it into a sensational headline. Secondly, articles like this do a very, very poor job of putting the situation in perspective.

Here's a better way of putting it… BioWare is releasing an expansion to SWTOR. In that expansion, SGR options will be available with some NPCs who appear in the new story content. This expansion is primarily defined by a new planet, Makeb, in addition to a higher level cap, revamped game mechanics (the combat math is being reworked), new abilities, reworked talent trees, and all sort of other expansion-y things.

Somehow, that explanation doesn't result in the same headlines…

What is interesting is that BioWare is *not* revisiting old content (e.g. companion story arcs or class quests) in any way. Since they are not revisiting this content, they are not adding things like SGR options. This is noteworthy not because it's surprising, but because they *did* promise to do this over a year ago and apparently never got around to it. Not the first time this has happened though, so at some point we should just stop being surprised.

Honestly, I'm more surprised at Ars for publishing an article with this kind of obviously-sensational bias. It presents a viewpoint which is not reflective of the SWTOR community, nor indeed merited by the situation at hand.

I understand that TOR is fully voice acted, but the same is true of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age serieses, and they had same-sex relationships. The fact that TOR didn't have LGBT options for relationships *from day one* is a step back from Bioware's normally-progressive stance.

A question I have: is any OTHER content being added to planets besides that one? If they're adding no content besides that planet, I understand where they're coming from. If they're adding new quests everywhere plus a new planet, saying "we can only add LGBT relationships on this new planet" seems weak.

Kind of sad, how many male nerds playing female characters there are that are disturbed by romancing the opposite sex. How about playing what you are in real life? If you want to see T&A jiggling around on your screen, watch porn.

I continue to not really understand the controversy or need for SGRs in SWTOR. It's not a dating simulator, the romantic relationships in the game don't get you anything more than a few extra side-conversations and some flirty in-game mail. There aren't even any Mass Effect style blurry sex scenes. If you really want romantic relationships of any kind, this is not the game for it.

As far as adding in SGRs specifically, it's easy to see why they did it this way. They aren't adding any new companions in the near future (they just added an HK droid a couple of months ago), and retrofitting the old companions to be able to turn gay would be a ton of work, as well as presenting disturbing problems. Should they make one of each of the classes companions gay for each sex? What if that doesn't fit the character? These companions are pretty well fleshed out, and having some of them turn gay would be out of character, not to mention advance the idea that being gay is a choice, which is not what I think most of the people wanting SGRs would want. The only reasonable course of action is to add SGRs in new content. Since there aren't new companions coming up, that means an NPC on Makeb. It's the only reasonable way to get it in the game at all.

I understand that TOR is fully voice acted, but the same is true of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age serieses, and they had same-sex relationships. The fact that TOR didn't have LGBT options for relationships *from day one* is a step back from Bioware's normally-progressive stance.

A lot of the companion content was cut pretty late in the dev cycle, You can tell where there was supposed to be a lot more companion missions and details than what we ended up getting.

Same sex marriage before the Mac conversion. I'm really curious how large the LGBT community is vs the folks running Windows on their Mac just to be able to play games like this or the group like myself who are waiting for a native version. Supposedly back in January the Mac version was the next big priority for them. Ahh well, we still don't have a date for Torchlight 2 either

I can't be the only one that actively tries to achieve every possible relationship option in one playthrough in a BioWare game and giggle maniacally at the results as my character opens his/her legs for every single breathing entity in the game universe.

Same sex marriage before the Mac conversion. I'm really curious how large the LGBT community is vs the folks running Windows on their Mac just to be able to play games like this or the group like myself who are waiting for a native version. Supposedly back in January the Mac version was the next big priority for them. Ahh well, we still don't have a date for Torchlight 2 either

You knew Macs weren't a native gaming platform when you bought it. Come on. You're like a minivan-owner complaining about not being able to compete on the racetrack. You knew what you signed up for, and the ROI for making a game Mac-compatible is minimal at best.

I can't be the only one that actively tries to achieve every possible relationship option in one playthrough in a BioWare game and giggle maniacally at the results as my character opens his/her legs for every single breathing entity in the game universe.

It's practically a BioWare tradition by now.

No you're not. I've done this in practically every one of their games I've played. It's so much fun.

Sucks about TOR and the way they're handling SGRs. Would be kind of fun to tweak the PC/NPC relationships. I just couldn't get into the game even at launch, it just wasn't that good either from a playability perspective, graphically, or combat-wise. Story was good though but after the 'starter' sequence it went downhill fast.

If the new planet was only for gay players and they were kept separate from the rest of the community, that would be segregation. The new planet is for all players and adds SGR.

It probably doesn't feel like segregation if you're straight - as, indeed, no one's keeping you from the new planet and relationships aren't gay-only there. But it certainly may feel like segregation if you're gay - as there's only one planet with gay relationships, and other planets are, indeed, straight-only.

You knew Macs weren't a native gaming platform when you bought it. Come on. You're like a minivan-owner complaining about not being able to compete on the racetrack. You knew what you signed up for, and the ROI for making a game Mac-compatible is minimal at best.

Explain Blizzard supporting both Mac and PC from day 1 w/all their software? Clearly it's been worth it for them. BioWare gave users the "install Windows in Boot Camp" runaround until January last year when they said it was their next big priority. Then no word has ever been spoken again. Car analogies fail BTW. There is no reason my Mac can't play TOR, it's system stats are perfectly in line with the game's requirements. The engine that Bioware uses was supposed to be gaining Mac compatibility last year in 1st quarter. Feel free to look down your nose at someone who willingly left Windows behind, but there are plenty of companies who see the benefit to having software on both OSes. Hell, most Bioware games are available on both platforms, but not TOR. It isn't even like they'd have to do a full conversion, it's all a wrapper around the engine. So it's just system hooks that are different basically.

Also, remember that the pre-cursor to Halo was Marathon, which was Mac only. If MS hadn't bought Bungie it would have been a Mac game. SHOCK! Games on a Mac! Oh noes!!

Frosty Grin wrote:

It probably doesn't feel like segregation if you're straight - as, indeed, no one's keeping you from the new planet and relationships aren't gay-only there. But it certainly may feel like segregation if you're gay - as there's only one planet with gay relationships, and other planets are, indeed, straight-only.

I'm sure that white people said the view from the lunch counter wasn't all that different, so why would black people want to sit there. Or there were windows all the way back on the bus, so why should they need to sit anywhere on it. Water tastes the same, so what does it matter if there are different fountains.

This is TOR shunting the situation off into a corner so it can be ignored and pretended to not exist.

If the new planet was only for gay players and they were kept separate from the rest of the community, that would be segregation. The new planet is for all players and adds SGR.

It probably doesn't feel like segregation if you're straight - as, indeed, no one's keeping you from the new planet and relationships aren't gay-only there. But it certainly may feel like segregation if you're gay - as there's only one planet with gay relationships, and other planets are, indeed, straight-only.

Have you played the game?

Romantic options in the game are barely there. This is a minor footnote in the game. Gay players who want to partake in Jedi/Sith battles aren't told they can't enjoy the game.

And given that other features were cut, and that this game has been losing money to the point of Bioware having layoffs, then people should appreciate that Bioware once again delivered options for all players, even at the financial cost of other features.

Equating the game to segregation is in fact shamefully inaccurate, as so keenly identified by another poster.

But it certainly may feel like segregation if you're gay - as there's only one planet with gay relationships, and other planets are, indeed, straight-only.

Your character is not you. They have a past before you started "playing" them, they speak in their own voice, and while you nudge them in a direction, they speak their own words, not the ones you chose. On top of that, it's a SW game about a galactic war, not a dating simulator. They could drop all the romance elements out of the game completely and it would lose maybe 10 minutes of content per class (if that), out of many, many hours.